


A Hundred Times Yourself

by Alonza



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Jealousy, King Alistair, One-Sided Relationship, Queen Cousland, Witch Hunt DLC
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-19 05:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12404427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alonza/pseuds/Alonza
Summary: I'm a good person, Lyliana Cousland thinks, saving Arl Eamon's son from himself. I'm an honest person, she believes, freeing the Dalish from the wolves. I'm a just person, she insists, turning deaf ears on Templar pleas, leading Mages from the Circle. "You're a good person," Alistair says one night at camp, and she lets the comment pass in silence. I didn't love you until you said you could be king, she thinks once, and thinks no more about it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A collection of drabbles inspired entirely by the wonderful Dragon Age community on Reddit. Posting this only so that I have something cohesive to refer back to for future drabbles, so that I don't have to keep digging through my past comments.
> 
> Summary from the prompt: Hypocrisy! Does your OC have a trait/belief/habit/principle that completely contradicts everything else they usually stand for? Are they aware of this contradiction?
> 
> (And yes, I am sorry my Warden's name is Lyliana... I know it's awful, but I was playing the game blind and now I can't shake it.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girl she'd been eleven years ago had thought she'd known everything. It's a funny dichotomy, really. There are so many things that she regrets now... but not many things she would take back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 2: What does your character think is the worst thing they've ever done? Do they regret it? Do they believe they were justified? Would they change it now if they could?

The letter from Alistair that had arrived by crow this morning is, in turns, sickeningly sweet and horrifically filthy. In the dingy cabin she's holed up in for the night, she sighs and skims through the babblings of a lovesick husband for anything relevant. Mages in Redcliffe. Something about an Inquisition. But no details, nothing concrete. Part of her is panicked, utterly convinced that she needs to return to Fereldan to help this poor fool navigate what sounds, from what fragments he's mentioned and from the hole that's opened up in the sky, to be the next global crisis. But the rational part of her knows that what she's doing now is far too important to abandon just to return to being the puppet-master beyond the Fereldan throne. Wasn't it her need to play puppet-master that had gotten her into this sad position in the first place?

The girl she'd been eleven years ago had thought she'd known everything. Looking back, there had been plenty of reason for it - at every turn, it seemed, someone was there with a problem that needed solving and a decision that needed making. How many months had she spent slogging though fields and forests, the growth of her ego outstripped only by her desire for revenge, as Denerim sent assassin after assassin and Highever remained in Howe hands? How was she meant to trust anyone else to lead when they'd all sat back and let these injustices happen, right under their upturned noses? How especially, when the son of the dead King had fallen so conveniently into her lap, and just as easily into her bed?

It's a funny dichotomy, really. There are so many things that she regrets now... but not many things she would take back. She regrets, intensely, staying with Duncan that night after Highever. At the time she'd been so overwhelmed with fear and grief, that the calm, stable man promising secret power had seemed the only option. And now, here she was. On a fool's errand to cure an early death - a decision she'd originally made to  _keep_  herself from an early death that night her parents had been killed. And yet, it's something she wouldn't take back, if given the option. Because, though it had been her biggest mistake, it had also afforded her so many things: revenge, Highever... the throne.

A throne that would, in how many years, fall empty when the poison they'd drunk sent the childless King and Queen to madness. Perhaps that was her biggest regret - installing a King who, by his own admission, could bear no heirs. Or... no more than one. Oh, Maker help her. Surely,  _that_  had been her biggest mistake. To let that  _witch_  run off with an illegitimate heir in her stomach, and one of unknown evil at that, when she herself was too tainted to bear her own. At least there had been a small comfort in this matter - the satisfying pressure of a dagger through a too-bare chest - but where-oh-where had that woman left the child? Lyliana wanted so desperately to believe that the abandoned infant had met the same fate as its mother, with no one to look after it, but Morrigan wouldn't have left it alone, would she? Regret number three - the lie to Alistair that this mission was for a cure alone, when, in truth, she was also searching for a black-haired child with its father's eyes,  ~~or another witch, who could perform a similarly impossible ritual~~. And yet, she wouldn't take these choices back either - Alistair would set off into the wilderness himself if he knew what it was that she truly sought. And neither of them would even be here now if she hadn't made him... If they hadn't...

In the dingy hut, Lyliana smooths the letter out, and allows herself a rare moment of (her often unacknowledged) despair. No. Though those things had been her biggest mistakes, they were not her biggest regrets. The evidence of  _that_  is in her hands, clutched between her dirty (royal) fingers. King Alistair Theirin's seal, even on a personal love letter, political details scarcely mentioned. They weren't absent because he hadn't thought to put them. They were absent because he was, honestly and completely, capable of handling them alone. If there were mages in Redcliffe, he'd march there to evict them. If there was an Inquisition gaining power, he'd send spies and diplomats to monitor its progress. This was King Alistair Theirin of Fereldan, Hero of the Fifth Blight, husband of the Hero of Fereldan, executor of traitor Loghain Mac Tir, and eleven-year ruler of the Fereldan kingdom, one of which had seen him rule unaided. A man so secure in his rule he stamped even his love letters with a royal seal. She wondered if he realized. She wondered if he'd care. She wondered if he'd  _laugh._  Eleven years ago, he wouldn't have. Eleven years ago, the very thought would have terrified him so much he'd have spent an evening burrowed in her shoulder, seeking validation, affection, and above all, help.

Eleven years ago, she had installed a man she hadn't thought she'd loved on the throne so that she could rule it. Eleven years later, she'd realized the man on the throne was no longer the one she'd fallen in love with.

And, Maker forgive her, she wouldn't take it back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They are curled up into the same lush, high-thread count bed, she on one side, he on the other. Alistair never thought he'd miss his tent in the mud, but it had been small, and intimate, and had always smelled like her and what they'd done. This bed is large - if he puts his arm out, he still won't be able to touch her. Looking at the ceiling as he is, it's almost as if she isn't there, which is what prompts in him the courage to finally speak. "You asked me to do it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 2: A conversation in bed with your LI

It is the twenty-third night since the Archdemon fell. And it passes just as the last twenty-two had. They are curled up into the same lush, high-thread count bed, she on one side, he on the other. Alistair never thought he'd miss his tent in the mud, but it had been small, and intimate, and had always smelled like her and what they'd done. This bed is large - if he puts his arm out, he still won't be able to touch her. Looking at the ceiling as he is, it's almost as if she isn't there, which is what prompts in him the courage to finally speak.

"You asked me to do it." And he thinks, for a moment, that she's still asleep - until he realizes the sound of soft breathing has stopped. He swallows. "You know I wouldn't have done it otherwise."

"Yes. I know." I know how you hated her, she doesn't say. I know how much convincing it took. I know you waited for me to change my mind, right up until she straddled you. But I changed my mind too late, he thinks she'd say. He wants her to say. The thing is, he doesn't know if she really would.

"Is it because I am king now?" he asks - demands, the most kingly he's found it in himself to sound. "You've gotten the title you wanted, and now you-"

"No." There is warmth by his side, a hand curled to his chest. "Alistair, no. Please don't think that."

It's minutes before either of them speaks again. "I keep thinking..." she breathes, voice mumbled as she presses her forehead against his shoulder. "-of how it must have looked. She's so, so beautiful, more than- And anyway, she's out there somewhere. With a baby, or a creature, or Maker knows what, but it's part of you, and I can't- You said we're tainted, and Grey Wardens can't do that. She's got a thing inside her that's heir to the throne, because I was so desperate to have us both alive that I-"

He has heard enough, and he flips her over and keeps her busy to shut her up. These thoughts are too weighty for him to deal with, so later, after they've made up for twenty-three days of lost time, he applies humor to them, as he does everything else. "We've beaten the impossible before. I'm sure if we just work extra hard at it, maybe stay in this bed awhile..."

She smiles at him, but it's wan and thin. "Another time." Her eyes drift closed. "I'm going after her. Tomorrow. I'm going to find her, and I'm going to kill her." Alistair holds her close and doesn't argue. But he is afraid, and whether it is for or of her, he does not know.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've just kissed for the first time when Alistair says it - Maker's breath, but you're beautiful. Immediately, the butterflies in her stomach, the feeling of utter contentment, comes crashing down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 1: Our characters are constrained by the options BioWare gives us. What was the #1 in-game moment where your character didn't fit the options presented to them? What headcanons have you adopted to explain or change it?

They've just kissed for the first time when Alistair says it -  _Maker's breath, but you're beautiful._  Immediately, the butterflies in her stomach, the feeling of utter contentment, comes crashing down.

What on earth does he mean? Even in Highever, she'd been a tomboy, skipping hair plaiting for stick fights with Fergus, hiding with her mabari from servants with scrub brushes. Now that she's been in the wild for months, what little style her hair had had is lost to frizz, and the last time she'd so much as touched the fabric of a dress was in Lothering, accidentally brushing up against a lady in a church.

 _You're lying,_  she thinks, but smiles weakly and lets him keep on blubbering.  _Or you've deluded yourself, because I'm the only woman here who'll have you and the world is ending._  The thought sits uncomfortably in her chest for weeks, until the next time he says it, handing her a rose. It's... a sad, sorry thing of a rose. Wilting and torn, it's been with him since Lothering, he says, and hands it to her like a treasured thing. And she... is touched. She threads it into the strings of her rucksack, and leaves a trail of wilting petals in her wake.


End file.
